


you know i can’t just let you be

by maplemood



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bickering, Christmas Eve, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Kastle Christmas Secret Santa Gift Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 12:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13213857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: “Lie still,” he growls.“I’m doing my best here,” Karen grits out. “But you’re no Clara Barton.”[Or, Frank and Karen have an old argument that, this time, turns into something new.]





	you know i can’t just let you be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captainkilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/gifts).



> Well, here it is! My Kastle Christmas fic is for Yggdra (aka favrielle on tumblr), who left two gorgeously atmospheric songs as prompts: “Stay Awake” by London Grammar and “Come In Close” by Joseph. Both of these songs enormously inspired the mood of this story, and the title comes from a lyric in “Stay Awake”. Merry Christmas, and I hope you enjoy!

Later, after the newspapers and the TV reports have quieted down as much as they ever will, and after his days go easy, sliding into a rhythm of work and sleep, slapped-together homemade sandwiches and strong black coffee—after it all, Frank visits Karen.

“I had this Sunday school teacher,” she says, apropos of absolutely goddamn nothing. They’re both three beers deep into an eight-pack; that must be reason enough. “Who told me...or maybe it was my grandmother. Maybe.” Karen considers, shakes her head. Unspooled from its bun, a strand of her long hair tickles his arm. “You know what she told me, Frank?”

“I’m some kind of mind-reader now?” The beer is good, warmed between his hands; the sight of her smile is better. “Go ahead.”

Karen folds back into the couch, wiping a hand across her mouth. “She told me that everyone’s got a talent. Everyone. Maybe it’s something small, something you wouldn’t think of—a guy who cooks the best pot of chili on the block, or a girl who has this song only she can sing so well. Little things, but they’re yours.”

“Huh,” says Frank, though she doesn’t sound as if she’s waiting for an answer.

“They’re yours,” Karen continues, “and they’re God-given. And you know what I always thought?” The smile she gives him this time is a small, solemn thing, mostly untouched by beer. “That your God-given talent must be dying.”

Whatever his original response is, two weeks later it’s been long lost; Frank could have a skull of plated iron on him but there are only so many blows that fucker can take before long-term memory goes to shit. He remembers what he has to—

(Lisa’s smile, Maria’s heartbeat, Frankie’s head pressed against the curve of his neck)

(Billy’s snarling, shredded face)

—lets the rest fall where it may. Frank can’t bring himself to be sorry over it now, not when he’s gained a new perspective on the whole thing. See: if his God-given talent is dying, Karen Page’s must be a complete inability to cover her own ass.

“Lie still,” he growls.

“I’m doing my best here,” Karen grits out. “But you’re no Clara Barton.”

She’s back on her couch, but this time spread across it, skirt slipping down and blood-spattered, blouse rucked up under her breasts. The cut slits across her ribs, into the softness of her belly. Too shallow to puncture anything vital, as far as Frank can see (though he’s no goddamn doctor, and his eyes...Christ, his eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be, nor his hands as steady). Deep enough to gout blood into her waistband, across the tattered towels she’s laid down.

 _Easy,_ Frank tells the thunderhead building in his gut. _You go easy on her, asshole._ Plenty of time to kill Karen himself, once the bleeding’s checked and the cut’s stitched shut.

That resolution lasts two minutes. Give or take.

“So.” He takes another antiseptic wipe to the edges to get them clean, none too gently. “All these thugs lining up to hold you at knifepoint, Page. All I’m saying is, it makes a man wonder, yeah?”

She bites her lip bone-white and refuses to meet his eyes, staring up at the flaky plasterwork ceiling instead. Hell, Frank doesn’t blame her—he sounds like nobody he’d want to know. Still the words find their way out, like an especially persistent stream of shit.

“This some new kink for you?”

Silence falls between them, not enough to cool either Frank’s guilt or his temper; enough to have him notice, for the first time since barging in here, that the breath is heaving out of both of them in twin smoky puffs. Gooseflesh prickles across Karen’s ribs and stomach. When she speaks the words come shallow and tightly controlled.

“What about gunpoint? Is that some new kink for me too?”

He aims a smack at her thigh, one hand still groping through the first-aid kit for a suture pack. In the cold air, the sound cracks. “You tell me.”

She waits until he’s done his part and the bloody, meat-market slice is a neat, seamed line tracking up her side. Then Karen pulls herself up and her blouse down. Her eyes, when she finally turns them on Frank, are as cold as a saint’s in a stained-glass window.

“You,” she says. “Of all people. You have no right.”

He latches the kit shut. Frank gets up to wash his hands; he swivels the faucet to cold and it spurts out cloudy and freezing, swirling pink down the drain. He shouldn’t have started. Not tonight, when God-all knows what shit’s running through their heads. Shouldn’t have started, but now she’s got the bone clamped between her teeth there’s no going back.

“It’s not some cute little side hustle, Frank. It’s my job.” For a moment he’s stupid enough (tired enough) to think that’s as far as she’ll take it. In the next, Karen lashes out at him, whip-sharp, vicious. “And you know what else it’s not? A compulsion.”

“That.” Frank turns to face her, hands still dripping. “That right there is one thick-ass slice of bullshit, ma’am.”

“Oh, so it’s back to 'ma’am' now. I’m wounded,” she snaps.

Frank snorts.

“Devastated. Asshole.” Karen swings her feet to the floor. Once upright, she starts yanking the bloodstained towels out from under her. One has managed to collect only a light splatter at the hem—she folds it in quick, gunshot snaps.

“You better not bust those sutures.” He sounds more malicious than concerned. More drunk frat boy than ministering angel. (Christ, what a picture _that_ makes.) “‘Cause I ain’t stitching you up again.”

“Don’t worry. I’d never ask.” Still soaked red, her hair a flyaway mess of static, Karen shoves past him to plug the sink. She dumps the towels in, yanks up the faucet, and sticks out a hand to test the water. Snatches it back. “Jesus!”

Frank retreats a few steps, arms folded. “Shit’s colder than a witch’s teat.”

“That’s your professional opinion?” She reaches for a hand towel. “The furnace broke down yesterday night. Landlord told us it’ll be fixed by tomorrow—” Karen tries pushing past him again, still wiping her hands. “—but in the meantime the building’s basically evacuated. What do you want?”

He realizes he’s grabbed hold of her arm. The girl’s got such a glare on her that he drops it almost instantly, like a subway groper caught in the act. “Let me.”

“No.” Karen slaps the damp hand towel over Frank’s shoulder, then stalks back to her couch and starts flipping cushions. Checking for missed bloodstains. It strikes Frank, not for the first time, that the routine’s old news to her. Settled bone-deep. When she catches her breath, a hand dropping to her side as the whole curve of her body stiffens, his blood boils.

“Karen.”

“I keep feelers out,” she says. She doesn’t look up. “The body washed up at the docks? Both legs broken, skull beaten in? Not one of your more convincing cover ups.”

He thinks—

( _rip it out, stomp on it, feed that shit to the dog_ )

—He thinks he knew what he was asking for all along.

“You want to go there?” Frank asks. It’s a warning, or it’s an invitation, or it’s something else altogether.

She turns on him. “What do you think I want?”

It’s a promise of release.

Their breaths stream out, cloud through each other’s. The hand towel drips an icy trickle down Frank’s back.

He finds, with a dull kind of fury, that the words—however he’d planned on tearing into her, digging deep and laying her bare—are gone. Flown straight out of his piece-of-shit head, lost to Karen’s glare and her jaw set tight as a snare.

She crosses her arms to mirror his, lets loose with something that’s half a laugh, half a sneer. “Okay,” she says. “You’re writing checks your ass can’t cash; okay.” Her scorn bites. Her disappointment is worse.

 _Move,_ Frank thinks. _Man, get out of here while you can._

He won’t.

He doesn’t.

It was never a secret. Not in the beginning, and sure as hell not by the time Lewis came around.

Beating men to a pulp in back alleys isn’t his only compulsion.

She stands there, arms still crossed. The flat white glow of the overhead light strikes through her hair and frames Karen’s face in a silvery halo, casts her with this frozen, Virgin-Mary quality that grates at Frank like nothing else. As if she’s so pure. So above the muck and shit. She’s drilled herself at least half as deep as he has, he knows. She’s no Madani, pinned to an ideal; she’s no Maria.

He knows.

They’re both neck-deep in the hole.

Frank clears his throat. “It ain’t your side-hustle. I get that.” Still it rumbles out sullen, through a sludge. “It’s your job, Karen. It’s your life. You do with it what you want.”

He’s not even hoping she’ll bend to it, truth be told. And Karen does not disappoint.

“No.” She shakes her head. “No.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, lady, what the hell else—”

“You absolute jackass,” Karen seethes, red and white and cold all over; her fists are clenched, her jaw’s clenched. Blood flecks her teeth. “Not without you.”

And here’s how removed from fucking reality this whole conversation is: Frank’s first thought has nothing to do with anything she just said. His first thought is, he’s courting pneumonia thanks to a goddamn towel. The damp’s soaked down to his shoulder, clammy as melting ice. Frank pulls the towel off. Finds himself aimlessly, stupidly wrapping it in one fist, around his knuckles.

“What did you say?”

“You know what I said,” Karen says, all ice again. Then, inexplicably, she takes pity on him. “It’s not going to end. Not for either of us.”

 _Think I don’t know that?_ he wants to shout. Frank’s fingers twitch—he could grab her chin, force her to meet his eyes the way he did with the kids when they were younger and fresh off of pulling some new brand of crap. But Karen isn’t a kid, and he’s not that variety of asshole. Not yet.

And a part of him, buried deep, has frozen hard and still.

“I lied,” she says. Her voice catches. “When I said it wasn’t a compulsion. I see dark corners and I run straight for them, and you don’t have to like that—you think I do? Seriously?”

“No,” he says, and the towel winds tighter. “Look—”

“I thought you were going there with me. That—” Karen bites off her next words as if she hates them, hates herself. “That’s one of the things that made it bearable. They’re people I love, who I can stay in the same room with for hours, and they don’t know me. You...I wish to God you’d come over more, I wish we talked more. You’re not always there, Frank.” Her glare flares sharp as ever. “But you’ve always known me.”

Whatever churns in his gut is too close to anger yet. He can’t see her but for the edges, the knife she sticks in and twists right through to the other side. He can’t feel her but for the boiling, bitter tenderness churning up from the same place.

Makes meeting her eyes much harder than it needs to be.

“I’m an asshole,” he says. It’s no chore to admit, but finding the words, scraping them into some semblance of sense, is. “And I get worried.”

Karen raises an eyebrow.

“You do good work. Yeah, and you know it, so I guess, what I’m trying to say…” Frank lifts his free hand to the back of his head and scratches furiously. “...guess if you ever stopped because of me, once I came back to my goddamn senses I’d kick myself in the ass. So you go in that dark, you turn up shit. Don’t need my permission for it, but…”

It’s all the truth. Doesn’t make saying it—saying it now—any easier.

“You’re not alone, Karen. You never were.”

She looks away with a quick hard cut of her chin, arms crossing again, tighter; it takes only a little imagination (room’s cold enough, anyway) to place her back by the bridge, considering the almost invisible waterline through the dark.

_Where does that end, Frank?_

_It’s not going to end._

An uneasy suspicion follows the drip of cold water down his spine. “Christ, lady,” he repeats. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know—”

Karen’s head whips toward him.

Her eyes are wet.

In two steps she crosses the space between them. Her hands are cold when she cups them, one over Frank’s cheek, the other just brushing the back of his skull. Her lips are colder, offering only a thin breath of warmth when she opens them to his; it’s soft, it’s fast, it’s nearly teasing—a quick dart of her tongue before she pulls away.

“After Lewis?” Karen snaps. There’s a laugh hidden in there, one that teases a grin from the corners of Frank’s own mouth. “You thought I’d be in the dark after _Lewis_?”

The little wet hiccup following that laugh, the smear of a tear track under her eye...the tenderness wells to something indescribable. Frank would cup her, the whole of her, between his palms. Never let go.

“Nah,” he says instead, voice husky. “Nah, I didn’t. I knew—don’t listen to me. Don’t know jack-all about what I’m talking about, most days.”

Karen rolls her eyes. “I’ll drink to that.”

She dips her head, fingers moving to unravel the towel still wound around Frank’s knuckles. When it comes loose, they’re wet with pinkish smears of her blood, watered down and bled through the fabric. Karen blinks down at the largest splash, slick across the knuckle of his ring finger. She dips her head further, and kisses it.

This time her lips are warm.

Frank shivers. “Hey.”

Finally, he takes hold of her chin, guides her eyes back to his. Her lips are stippled with the same smear; he tries thumbing it away without much luck. “Karen,” he says, “this place feels like a damn meat locker. Let me put you up in a hotel for the night or something, come on.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t go back out there.”

“Not tonight, huh?”

“Not tonight.”

This isn’t new territory. Frank tries to convince himself so, thrown off by the hesitance, the stumbling bashfulness of it all. They’ve been soft with each other, quiet as often as they’ve been loud, they’ve said what they’ve said before, tens of times. Hundreds, maybe. This time shouldn’t change things. It does, because apparently they’re neither of them any better than teenagers.

“Okay.” He laces his fingers through hers, squeezes. “Okay.”

Karen asks, “Did something just short-circuit in there?”

Give her credit—his bashfulness vanishes damn quick after that zinger. “Ditching the journalism for stand-up, okay.” Frank ducks his head.

Karen snorts.

“No, really, my sides are splitting.” He sucks in a deep breath. Sounds pissed, kind of nervous.

Mostly nervous.

“Tell me what to do.”

The snow starts later, an hour or so after the streetlights come on. Not much to it, just a drizzle of sleet tapping against her window. Karen stirs on the pull-out couch, lifts her head towards it, and groans.

“Shit.” Her hands are still somehow freezing. When she settles one on his shoulder Frank, who’s spent good time hoarding warmth under the three sheets and two quilts stripped from the bed and scrounged from the closet, jerks out of a doze so fast it takes him another good minute to remember where he is.

Why he’s here.

“Shit, I completely forgot.”

“Huh?” Give him two good minutes before he’s up to anything more coherent than that.

“It’s Christmas Eve.” Karen eases onto her back.

“You—uh, you sure?” Without Maria or the kids he’s lost track. Frank has to assume Karen did, too, even before coming up against another scumbag with another knife. He was angry before, and groggy now, but he’d have to be a hell of a lot blinder than Red ever was to miss a Christmas tree lurking in the gloom of the apartment.

“Positive.” The mattress creaks as she settles. Bleary, he fumbles to catch her hand.

“Thanks,” Karen says as he begins to chafe it. She’s close enough for him to feel, or imagine he feels, the curve of her grin against his shoulder. “Well, the bigger the night, the bigger the fight.”

“Mmm. This another one of your—who was it—your Sunday school teacher’s words of wisdom?”

Karen giggles. “I mean, the poor woman had to find some way to kill time during all those purity classes.”

“Purity classes?” His eyes flick wide open. “What the hell?”

Her giggle fractures into a full blown laugh, cut off quickly. Frank heaves himself a little closer, and slides his free hand down her side. Karen’s changed into sweatpants and a floppy, worn-soft sleep shirt. The hem slides up easily, gently. Frank doesn’t touch his fingers to the cut. He cups his palm along the soft plane of her belly for a minute, feels the warmth there, the fine flickering rise of her breath.

“Those sutures bothering you?”

“Not really.” Her breath catches, quickens. Frank’s quickens along with it.

“Not more than usual,” Karen whispers.

He traces his fingers higher, just under the heaviness of one breast. “I’ll check them tomorrow.”

“And I’ll repay you.” She closes her eyes, letting out the smallest, softest of sounds when he cups it. “Chinese takeout. My treat.”

The sound shivers across Frank’s skin, across his bones; he could stay this way, holding her, forever. He couldn’t. He can’t. Too close. Nowhere near close enough. He’d come to her, and she’d welcome him, Karen with her glares, her inability to keep her head down and her ass covered. Her words that force him, again and again, to go deeper than he plans to, as deep as he needs to. If he’s the thunderhead, see, if Frank is the thunderhead—Karen is the thunder. Karen is all the sound and fury that follows.

In the end, though, the fresh sutures decide it.

“Spare no expense,” Frank says. He slides his hand back down, shaking in a way that has nothing to do with laughter.

“None.” She shudders along the path of it, but the teasing edge can’t quite leave her voice. “Hell, I’ll even let you pick out two types of egg rolls.”

“I’ll hold you to that." He runs his thumb over her knuckles. Over and over. Waits for it all to ebb back to something bearable. He’ll keep her warm. It’s the least she asked for, the least he can do. He’ll keep her warm.

All through the night.

Later, even later, while snow fusses against the glass like a swarm of whiteflies, while the clock blinks quarter past one on Christmas morning, Karen says, without bothering to whisper this time, “If you want to visit...in a week or two, after these come out…”

 _If you want me,_ Frank almost says, proving what a damn idiot he still is, as if they both won’t rip each other apart to make that clear. But it’s a new thing, a fresh, raw thing—

It’s not new at all. No more than their argument was.

He thinks they’ll be circling to the same arguments, biting at each other’s tails, for the rest of their lives. He thinks he won’t mind if they do.

Still. Frank takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says on the exhale. “Yeah, Karen, _Christ_ —”

When he falls asleep, his face buried in the curve of her shoulder, Karen’s hard long legs hooked around his, Frank’s thought is, _maybe_. Maybe, if his God-given gift is dying, and hers is conviction...maybe they’re both ready, now, to get back to the business of living.   


End file.
